1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to peripheral devices. More specifically, the present invention relates to maintaining the integrity of data on a peripheral storage device.
2. Related Art
It is typically desirable to maintain the integrity of data stored in data storage devices and other peripheral devices. Corruption of memory at the application level is often an issue in data storage devices. Corruption can occur when less than all the appropriate data is written during an update of an area of memory. These problems can occur readily due to events such as device contention, surprise eject, forceful application termination, and application malfunctioning, whether crashing or otherwise.
Additional copies of the data that are made are typically called “backups.” The term “backup,” in this context, refers to making copies of data so that these additional copies may be used to restore the original after a data loss event (e.g., data corruption).
Presently, data can be stored on a peripheral device, such as a secure data storage device (an external hard drive or a Universal Serial Bus (USB) flash drive, for example). These devices can be coupled to a host computer. However, data corruption can occur. For example, if a device is disconnected from a host computer without initially performing a clean ejection, then data can be corrupted. Consequently, there is a need in the art for an improved system and method for maintaining the integrity of data stored on a peripheral storage device.